biblical worldviewing

My wife and I are no longer going to movies when they come out to the theater–it’s much too expensive. Instead, we wait for them to come to DVD and use Blockbuster online which is so cheap for what you get that sometimes I feel like I am stealing from the good people at Blockbuster! Occasionally, though, we will decide a movie might be worth seeing when it comes to the $1.50 movie theater which shows movies about 4 to 6 months after they have been released. We decide some movies are really worth that $3 (for the both of us) to see on the big screen instead of our 24-inch television at home and we don’t want to wait the extra 3 months for the film to come to DVD, and plus it’s a nice little opportunity for a “date night”. So on Saturday we went to see Transformers.

After the movie, something you could have heard coming from my mouth was, “Transformers was about as long as King Kong, but twice as exciting.” It was the kind of movie that you watch and during the first hour you might think every 10-15 minutes “this movie is… so cool! I wonder how much time is left… an hour still?? great!” And maybe during the last hour you might even think “oh gosh there’s only 15 minutes left–too bad, but I’m sure there will be something amazing left to see!”

Not only was the movie exciting in a tightly wound, spell-binding narrative and action sense, it was good in terms of characters and it did a good job of maintaining the right level of scope. It didn’t try too hard to explain every character’s past and then tie up every character’s loose ends, but gave just the right amount of exposition. Also, I loved the way the Autobots and Optimus Prime spoke in this heroic, epic way that was almost like a biblical tone.

Something else occurred to me about the film. The first hour of the movie and then the last 20 minutes features the U.S. Military of 21st Century in a big way. Of course, the power and effectiveness of the U.S. Military was used as a backdrop to the power and advanced technology of the Deceptacons–nevertheless, few could watch without being impressed by the awesome power and resources of the U.S. Military. Screeching jets dropping high powered bombs with pinpoint precision to any location just minutes after being requested, vast networks of communications and reconnaissance all working together to identify threats, helicopters, tanks, humvees, body armor, advanced infantry weapons and artillery, and incredibly trained and disciplined soldiers–my mind continually thinking, “they may be failing against fictional robots, but all this military strength is reality. What nation could hope to stand against the U.S. Military?!” It does seem like the U.S. Military is an earthly unstoppable force, but it wasn’t long till I was reminded that even the mightiest force on earth is like some little boys with sticks compared to the Lord God almighty.

Psalm 2
The Reign of the LORD’s Anointed
1 Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
3″Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
4He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
5Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6″As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”

Ever heard the expression, “Pray as if everything depends upon God, work as if everything depends upon you”?

Now I can see why such a statement would be made. I can see the heart behind such a saying! It’s encouraging people to have profound times of prayer and ask the Lord for help–which is a good thing. It’s also saying to not only be hearers but doers, and work to bless and serve others–which is another good thing. The problem is not in the heart of the saying, but the actual words. The saying is not reality. There is no ‘as if’ about everything being dependant upon the Lord–everything really is dependant upon the Lord, praying and working.

The Bible is so wonderful because not only does it make clear what a believer in Christ is supposed to do, but the why! To the Bible, motive is important.

1 John 4:19
We love because he first loved us.

1 Peter 1:16
since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy”

Hebrews 13:12-13
“So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.”

The Bible is concerned with the real. The Lord would not ask us to do something based upon any false motivation when true reasons that call for action are enough. The saying “Pray as if everything depends upon God, work as if everything depends upon you” is so much less encouraging than something that was real, something like this:

“Pray because everything depends upon God, work because everything depends upon God and he has ordained ordinary men and women to fulfill his purposes, and to God be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Last night I went to a really excellent Bible study put on by Dr. Roger Wiles. It was on the Glory of God, or the 5th Sola. During the middle of the teaching, my cellphone went off in my pocket and I was of course really embarrassed and apologetic–afterall, there were less than 12 people there. I pulled out my phone to put it on vibrato and saw that the call was coming from a Charlotte area code (704). I didn’t make the connection, but the fact is that as of yesterday, my last reference arrived at RTS Charlotte. The Bible study went on and I had another discussion with my pastor afterwards about the validity of a person going to seminary on their own accord without being officially sent out by a church’s elders. I told him I thought very highly of his perspective but I had trouble making sense of it myself. We talked for a long time and he explained the problems posed by a seminary student preaching in a homiletics class who had never been sent by a church to be there. I told him it was never my desire to be an island of a minister or missionary, and how I was originally thinking of going to seminary for a master’s. Actually, Sarah’s father (who is an elder in the same denomination, different church) was the one who recommended going for the M.Div so I could later be approved by the church and sent. It was a difficult conversation, but I thank the Lord it was free from any pettiness and sincerely spoken in love. My pastor consented it was not wrong to go to seminary at your own desire and it was a godly thing to want–he just feels a more God-honoring decision would be to do nothing now and wait until I am sent.

After further discussions with Sarah’s dad, it seems like the official stance of the Orthodox Presbyterian church is that the session does not exist to send some young men to seminary and bar others, but to establish a partnership and put under care and examination any young men who express desire to enter into ministry. My case, he says, may be considered special in the way I am not a member now but seeking membership while starting seminary at the same time. If I had been a member of the church a year before all this, it might be a different story–or it could be I would be sent to seminary now anyway with the church’s blessing. I fully respect my pastor’s perspective, but at the same time, I believe the desire to enter seminary and graduate as soon as possible and taking my new wife into ministry or the mission field is a calling implanted by the Lord.

By the way, the phone call was from the dean of admissions at RTS. I have been accepted and will start classes on February 6th!

I have a new pastor. I am becoming a member of a great OP (Orthodox Presbyterian) church here in Greensboro, and the pastor there is becoming more and more of a pastor to me. Through lunch meetings and chats we’ve had after church, I feel it is certainly the Lord’s providence that led me to this church and also to have this man as my pastor. The other day, however, my pastor took me to lunch and gave me some advice about starting seminary this semester (less than 2 weeks away) that was very hard to swallow. I don’t mean it was hard to believe he was speaking biblical wisdom, because he seemed supported enough in everything he was saying, but I mean he told me of a perspective that I had never heard before and never once had cross my mind. He asked me, ‘Why do you think you should go to seminary without being called to by the church?’

I had no good answer, because his question presumes that a decision to move towards a vocational ministry is not something a person should take it upon themselves to decide out of a heart desire or dream, but, much more solidly, the call needs to come from a body of elders in a church that has examined a person and their gifts and recommends they serve the Lord through going to seminary and doing ministry. My pastor sees people who up and go into ministry on their own (whether they hope to partner with a church or not) as taking away from the supremacy of God in the church. I think he would say there are many many people working as pastors and missionaries who have undercut their own ministries by not waiting on the Lord to call them through the church–even that if many of them had waited, they might have found they could honor God much more by not being in ministry at all. In the past two days nothing has been more prevalent on my mind than his words and the decision to start seminary. Please be in prayer.

Without fail, every night when I drop her off at her dorm my fiancee, Sarah, tells me to ‘drive safe’ on my way back to the house. Of course I say ‘fine, don’t worry’, and without fail she says, ‘no! promise you’ll drive extra safe’, and I always do. The part of the trip she is most afraid of is the top of an off-ramp coming from a 55 mph state highway. It’s a rural road, and the brilliance of country folk shines bright by the fact there is a yield sign, not a stop, for people turning right (which is me). Why in the world should you have to stop all 100 times out of 100 if there is only going to be another car 3 times out of 100? Sarah says I always take the turn too fast, even though I tell her about how much extra gas it takes to slow way down off a highway only to accelerate again on the next road AND that it is perfectly legal (to my knowledge) in the great state of North Carolina to cross the solid yellow double lines of a 2-lane road with your 2 driver’s side tires only during a curve situation with no oncoming traffic. This curve’s ominous reputation in Sarah’s mind led me to call it ‘Dead Man’s Curve’, which is just a funny name. Then I thought about those words. If Christ has redeemed me and I am now a living man, now for me, it is a sign of the death at work in my flesh to sin. When I am tempted, not fighting back by faith and hope in Christ and letting myself get carried away by temptation is, in essence, like flooring the gas pedal when I’m on Dead Man’s Curve–on my own, I spin off into oblivion.